It's not really a policy change though is it? Aren't they enforcing laws that cyclists previously were breaking with impunity? I would like them to show their work too, but I don't really see the policy conspiracy angle to this.
Most auto drivers, myself included, regularly (and with impunity) break the law against driving over the speed limit. If police announced they intend to start ticketing people for even 1-9mpg speeding violations, we would all agree this was a massive "policy change."
(Note that I'm not saying that these law breaking activities are equivalent; only that there are a multitude of laws that are not enforced, and a change in enforcement is indeed a policy change.)
Because obviously, this is NYC's biggest problem. I can see the headlines now: "Cyclist Moving Violation Crime Wave Hits as Snowfall Begins, but NYPD Strikes Back"
I would be careful comparing the work of pseudo scientific "spiritualists" to that of neuroscience. Why do you think scientists don't embrace these ideas? Is it really because they're somehow spiritually devoid and foolish and intentionally ignoring whatever truth you think you're grasping? Or is it because what you're talking about is nebulous and inherently impossible to test, with no theoretical underpinning based on experimental observation?
It's funny, because in the lab I work in, we explicitly explore the subjective experience of mediators and novices, under different mental states, and record with EEG and fMRI. What people may think of as "nebulous and inherently impossible to test, with no theoretical underpinning based on experimental observation", is often closer the opposite in the scheme of things…
I wasn't saying that meditation isn't measurable, or that it's a waste of time, I was talking about the idea of the brain as a "receiver of consciousness". Meditation is definitely interesting, but it is dangerously easy to cross from "this helps/interests me personally" into "I have constructed an irrational belief system based on insights that are ill defined and not supported by evidence"
I see what you're saying, and I have to add that such boundary (if such is even well defined) isn't necessarily limited to "spiritualist" and not neuroscientists (at least from what I have seen…) or any other groups of people when such groups are often arbitrarily defined by any given society.
Consciousness is ill defined scientifically (and even among the many concepts that practitioners of what people equate to meditation have been arguing about for thousands of years) and if you asked the layman what they equated to what consciousness is, one would probably take away the same amount of information as to what it is compared to asking neuroscientists.
People throughout the times have had many ideas that were seen as rational and seem to be based on insights supported by evidence, until later on people learned that such beliefs/ideas were irrational and the supported evidence was dubious. The people who lived and died when such ideas/beliefs were not irrational will never know it, same with those who died thinking it helped them/such things were in their personal interests no matter how "true" such things may have been for x period of time.
Maybe if we seek didn't limit ourselves to what things can and can't be, "receiver of consciousness" wouldn't seem so irrational any more than what people now equate to popular science that at some time was equally as irrational but is no longer questioned to the same degree which could be equally as irrational at some point in the future.
But yeah, some sr. research scientist phd who studied ap physics and helped build quantum computers and now trying to apply the some methods they learned in a field to psychology/neuroscience where the current "kings of the hill" use surveys and more surveys with the occasional cutting some people/animals open, is probably not going to want to entertain ideas that relate qed systems and qm theories to meditation with meditation instructors not versed in such to any conversational degree, when they have a hard enough time trying to explore such things with neuroscientists they work with who just got some big funding from politicking that in the scheme of things probably wont advance the field any more than next dubious publication that gets plastered over social media and perceived as fact.
What kind of work do you do at your lab? I'm dubious about being able to measure experience, but hey, I've been wrong lots of times before. I've had some superficial thoughts about how quantum computing relates to consciousness, but I simply don't have the background to seriously explore this.
That idea that "the brain is a receiver of consciousness" is held in a number of different teachings. I wasn't necessarily trying to establish equivalence. I'm speaking of a very different view of the world.
Is that a good thing? Aren't games like that designed to provide constant, positive, encouraging feedback for the player's "work"? There's no real risk of failure as long as you put enough time in, unlike the real world.
This is my quibble against WoW and the like. I had a lot of growth experiences in a much more brutal environment, a game called Tibia. I haven't heard any MMO as unforgiving, specially in it's early days. A single death costs you about 15% of your total play time (you lose items, experience, all there is to lose basically). Killing someone usually held a profit.
As a kid, it meant you would play hours and hours and get beaten repeatedly. You'd lose everything and then you'd have to find motivation to do better next time. You would find friends and nurture relationships because you needed and later because you found you really enjoyed them. Eventually, you would find you can kill for fun and profit, completely destroying weeks or months of a fellow player. It's a sort of Bottom-Up introduction on how civilizations form, because some time you realize the instabilities associated with violence (or, depending on your personality, just compassion from your repeated deaths). Protection networks formed -- killing someone might get you hunted. Guilds were the next step in this protection network, with huge political intricacies such as necessity of protecting some members which may or may not be in a morally justifiable position to maintain the position of power of the Guild.
I could go on. Some of the smartest people I know and many of my best friends played the game in their youth; I wouldn't say it made who they are, but if it didn't it surely provided an amazing opportunity to learn some thing you don't really do until a much later age, if ever.
May I recommend EvE? It has an almost silly amount of gamer-driven complexity with a reputation for ruthlessness mostly unseen elsewhere. I liken it to a fun reminder that the real world isn't such a nasty place; and if I ever feel it is, I just need to try to fly a transport through low security space. Preferably with a week's worth of planet junk.
It also happens to be a fun game. But it's super easy to make a simple, badly timed mis-click and lose your stuff to a random gank trap. (And no, ship insurance really doesn't help all that much.)
Umm, hardcore Diablo 1, 2 & 3 (3 before the expansion protected paragon experience). You die, you lose everything. The good old days of farming in D2 at 98+ only to have a PK enter the game and declare hostile... that's something like real fear.
Much as in life, you aren't competing versus the game - you're competing versus the other players. If you only put the minimum amount of work in to level up, you're never going to stand out.
My point was that the game is specifically designed to remove the aspects of hardship, frustration, and uncertainty from the work. It's not an analogy for real world problems because the real world isn't designed to coddle you and make you want to keep playing (or working). You might as well say that Cookie Clicker provides useful life lessons.
Edit: Feel free to disagree with me, but personally I wouldn't see WoW on a resume and think, "This person has experience doing hard work in the face of adversity".
>Edit: Feel free to disagree with me, but personally I wouldn't see WoW on a resume and think, "This person has experience doing hard work in the face of adversity".
I played on a PVP server, and the spontaneous PVP that occurred was almost never fair. I'd often explore the world alone, and get attacked by groups of enemy players. I fought back despite near-impossible odds; not giving up allowed me to improve. So when the game's arena system came out, and the playing field in PVP became more fair, my team attained the top rank (gladiator) in the most competitive battlegroup (bg9). Only the top 0.5% of teams earned that rank. I was one of only a few (less than 10 IIRC) hunters on US realms to get the gladiator rank for the first 2 seasons when they were underpowered and still had a dead zone. Most of the matches I played were against pros who also played WoW in e-sports tournaments.
I was a long-time member of a great guild, and although I wasn't the leader, I was chosen to be the player pursuing the Scarab Lord quest line for the guild. The quest took weeks to complete, and many parts required the help of my entire guild. I was one of two players out of 10,000+ to complete the quest on my server and open the AQ gates.
Initially at least, there were some parts of the game that took hard work and collaboration of an entire team in the face of adversity to reach some elite achievements. I don't disagree with you about the resume part though. Most wouldn't view WoW accomplishments on a resume as positive, and that's why I've never included them on mine.
Have you heard of Eve Online? You can lose your virtual shirt if you just bound about obliviously. It happens quite often and the game can be ruthless at times.
I'm also surprised Raph didn't bring up Eve at all. It's a pretty successful and significant sandbox that takes its lineage from Ultima Online. It's nowhere behemoth level that WoW is but it fills its niche.
> Edit: Feel free to disagree with me, but personally I wouldn't see WoW on a resume and think, "This person has experience doing hard work in the face of adversity".
Many people would see a positive, depending on what you were applying for. Excelling at a game would almost always be a plus worth mentioning if you were applying to a gaming company, be it a developer or Twitch. It's no different than any extracurricular, only mention it if it's likely to help you.
Excel enough at a game, and you can start your own business based on the game (as much as businesses started by young gamers tend to flame out very quickly) or get unsoliticed job offers (as much as they tend to be shady). Or now, between Twitch and Youtube, make playing the game your job.
It really sounds like you're trolling. If you're actually trying to have a debate in good faith, please read back over your posts and edit them to reflect that. Using dismissive language such as calling space probes "toys", or space exploration "some arbitrary aim" doesn't help your cause - it makes you sound juvenile, defensive, and bitter.
I don't really buy that... the only liberal views I can think of that are popular in the aggregate on reddit are about the war on drugs and sometimes socialized medicine. In general, reddit is pretty hostile towards women, skeptical of feminism, overtly racist, and pro-military.
I guess I would characterize it more as libertarianism strongly centered on the perspectives of middle class, white men.
Edit: I guess "I don't really buy that" was a poor choice of words. I don't think you're lying to me. But your experience was very different from my experience. I stopped using reddit because I felt like all the big subreddits were too socially conservative!
I'm not sure how being skeptical of feminism is an inherently non-liberal view. I'd say it depends on whether the feminism in question is oriented around civil rights, or around some form of critical gender theory. "Feminism" alone is not descriptive enough to make any judgment over.
Pro-military? How? I haven't visited it in a while, but a common sentiment on AskReddit was a total disillusionment with the chauvinistic "support the troops" mentality and a belief that military service does not make one righteous in of itself.
Yes, the critical theory is what I'm talking about, and I think that knowledge is definitely associated with the political "left". The issue I had is that the skepticism is almost always ignorant and dismissive. It's just impossibly frustrating to try to talk to someone who refuses to do any background reading but wants to tell you you're wrong about concepts that live in an academic and historical context.
As for the military, I guess that one is more debatable. I agree that the Bush-era "support the troops" jingoism isn't around much, but I used to see a lot posts where it's implicit. Things like hugely popular photos of special ops soldiers followed by adoring comments of how "badass" they are.
>I haven't visited it in a while, but a common sentiment on AskReddit was a total disillusionment with the chauvinistic "support the troops" mentality and a belief that military service does not make one righteous in of itself.
Enough kids who grew up playing Call of Duty has shifted reddit into being more pro-military and pro-weapons. There is also a steady stream of "coming home" photos and videos with kids and pets.
I disagree. Pretty much any news article or situation is sided with the left on Reddit. Its even difficult to have an open and honest discussion here on HN, because anything that goes against the mainstream view (which tends to be liberal) is downvoted and silenced.
Its getting to the point where the only way to defend against such tactics is to play just as dirty.
Brendan Eich donated money with the sole goal of denying equal rights to people based on their sexuality. There's nothing wrong with having an unpopular opinion, but I think there is something wrong with that. And I suspect you would too if it were you whose rights were being taken away.
Edit: Eich supported Proposition 8 which was _ruled unconstitutional_ for violating the Equal Protection Clause. Yes, his support was non-criminal, but he was fundamentally supporting something wrong, both morally and legally.
Eich participated in a public system in an approved way at a political level, did so without letting his politics get in the way of his personal or professional life, and made functional programming ubiquitous. There's nothing wrong with what he did given that he didn't let that view (in the abstract) color his personal interactions.
And, let us note, it's all speculation on this point as to what or why he did it, because the man himself hasn't said anything on the matter--mostly because of the gay hate brigade rallied against him.
By contrast, Tim Cook continued contracts with Foxconn with the sole goal of minimizing production costs by using underpaid overworked labor--and if you look at Apple close enough, yeah, there's some nastiness there. He's a solid operations guy (clearly!), but has directly supported policies that have harmed both our industry and workers abroad.
I'm likely going to get downvoted into oblivion (again, and in hilarious underscoring of my point).
> Tim Cook continued contracts with Foxconn with the sole goal of minimizing production costs by using underpaid overworked labor
I'm going to upvote you for this.
Just because Tim Cook is gay doesn't make him Mother Teresa. He seems quite happy in promoting brutal Victorian style work-houses because it's "over there". Out of sight, out of mind. He's quite the hypocrite.
He's also no better or worse then the operations guy at Dell, Samsung, Lenovo, etc. who are all churning out products from the same manufacturers and assembly lines in China and South-East Asia. I don't know why people keep promoting the myth that he is some amazing operations guy when everything is outsourced anyway, and recent products have suffered from manufacturing delays and raw material supply issues.
> Just because Tim Cook is gay doesn't make him Mother Teresa. He seems quite happy in promoting brutal Victorian style work-houses because it's "over there". Out of sight, out of mind.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Many of my more naive, young gay friends and acquaintances actually DO seem to think that 'being a powerful gay person', onto itself, makes him worthy of worship.
> He's quite the hypocrite.
Did he actually say that its wrong to promote brutal Victorian style work-houses?
I am also bothered with the way workers are treated. I sickened by the way these companies are polluting the world.
I've never been O.K. with this bottom line crap. It seems
like people really don't care though? As long as they can
have their comfortable life, exciting life, powerful life, and their electronic gadgets, etc., the're not loosing any sleep?
Maybe it's just human nature to turn a blind eye to the real
problems. Yes--Tim Cook coming out is a deal. Personally, I felt he should have came out a long time ago.(He was financially able to years ago?) If you have a deep felt
issue and you are poor, or have no power in society; I understand why you hide, and don't try to make the world a better/fairer place. Tim Cook should have came out years ago. Why--because he was an American, and was wealthy. Being American and having the protection of wealth gives you
a platform to really make a difference. O.K. Tim you are gay. The people around you(Bay Area demographics) never cared. Bring the manufacture of your products back to the
United States, or to countries that don't exploit workers, and decimate environments. I'll get hammered for having
an opinion on Hacker News, or any opinion other than a carefully scripted, beyond polite waste of words.
> Just because Tim Cook is gay doesn't make him Mother Teresa.
It's depressing to see this myth perpetuated that Mother Teresa was a good person.
She was a horrible human being who denied poor and sick people the help and medicated relief they needed just because of her religious beliefs. Of course, she also denied abortion, contraception and all other kinds of medical help that were not in line with her religious beliefs.
She was convinced that suffering brings you closer to god, so she made sure everyone under her care suffered as much as possible.
She was a sick and twisted person and the faster she gets forgotten, the better.
There was a time in India when people with leprosy were left out to die along the streets and no one would come near them. If you had it, your family and the society would ask you to leave the area. I have heard stories from people of my grand fathers generation of how Mother Teresa and her followers (Sisters of charity), would physically carry the lepers and care for them. They really believed in the cause and had a lot of courage. Many of the sisters contracted leprosy doing this. For this they gained enormous respect from people of all religions in Calcutta.
If you have ever seen a leper in India and their condition, you would not have called her sick and twisted.
Obligatory Godwin: Hitler probably thought he was doing The Right Thing, too.
Mother Theresa believed that suffering brings you closer to god. Sure, she were courageous and tried their best to help people, but that was probably more inspired by actively seeking suffering (and helping other people suffer) than altruism.
But it's absolutely on par for Catholicism (or guilt-based Christianity in general). Declaring her a saint was perfectly reasonable.
Wow, what book of lies have you been reading, or writing.. I cannot even begin to tell you how far off you are. And you call her a myth. They say Jobs had a reality distortion field but you take the cake! Good luck with your fantasy world.
Ok, I'm going to 'educate' myself with some random link that you found from some random guy's blog who also has a personal vendetta against all Theists(Military Association of Atheists). I can find a thousand links to show the opposite. Have you done ANY research on her or read or talked to a member of the order she started? Thought not. When casting an opinion, always look at both sides before you talk, not just the one you want to believe. That's how you get to the truth. The real truth. Oh, by the way, thanks for the down vote. Really mature of you.
How many millions of Chinese are still scratching out a living from the dirt -- literally? People living in abject poverty would love to have Western industry set up a factory, or provide the contracts to give work to a factory in the first place, so that they could leave their 14th century villages and way of life.
Just because Tim Cook is gay doesn't make him Mother Teresa.
It's also completely irrelevant to the subject of Brendan Eich's support of bigoted TV ads. Which is why I found the arguments made by the poster above you to be not really interesting, or worth responding to.
This. I used to live in Kolkata (then Calcutta), where she had setup her place, and it was sick to see people being asked to pray to the Christ when they needed food and medicine instead.
Underpaid in what way? Are there many other jobs those people could be doing which pay them better? They're not paid much by US standards but the alternative is subsistence level farming. Is anyone who puts their production into China (and let's remember that's basically everyone in hardware before we single out Apple) being nasty by offering people a better income than they can get anywhere else?
It's the market rate, something incidentally most people in tech in the West are pretty happy about when it's driving massively above average salaries for programmers and the like.
In terms of overworked - Foxcon workers recently went on strike because the amount of overtime they were being offered had been reduced. If they're overworked it would be very odd behaviour to strike to demand more.
Essentially Foxcon workers get to choose between two things - a shitty life working at Foxcon and a really shitty life not working there. That's unfortunate, but it's not Tim Cook's fault, it's in part the fault of the Chinese government, in part the result of them having been dealt a shitty hand and a consequence of global capitalism which most of us are in some way complicit in.
To place this at the door of Cook is pretty naive.
The reason this is placed at the door of Cook is because he's very likely one of, if not the most responsible person for those choices at Apple. He played a very large role in operations at Apple. He also sits on the board of Nike, partly because he is very well regarded in supply chains and operations. Are you going to sing Nike's praises as well for worker treatment?
Whether or not those choices are moral is certainly up for debate. Whether or not Time Cook was largely responsible for them is not.
And as for the "market rate" you are talking about a country that does not allow it's currency to float on the exchanges, heavy subsidizes or outright controls much of the industry and denies workers access to information online about working conditions and pay. Playing into a regime that intentionally abuses workers to ramp up their industrial output wouldn't be something I would be particularly proud of and most definitely would not be something I would consider controlled by market forces.
Cook is clearly a prime decision maker in where Apple operate but the poor situation for Chinese workers can't reasonably be laid at his door.
The wages are controlled by market forces, even if the market is being manipulated by the Chinese government.
But Cook isn't responsible for Chinese economic or fiscal policy and pulling Apple out if China would hurt the workers who may have shitty jobs but at least have jobs.
As it is Apple face higher scrutiny than most of their competitor in the same situation and as a result actually behave marginally better when it comes to worker treatment.
It's not something to be particularly proud of but the overall plight of Chinese workers, even those at Foxcon, is not a situation for which Cook can realistically be held significantly responsible or categorised as nasty (nasty being the original characterisation I was refuting).
It's the consequence of a capitalist economy which Cook may be a small part of but is neither the creator nor the controller.
> There's nothing wrong with what [Brendan] did given that he didn't let that view (in the abstract) color his personal interactions.
Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes. After that he continued to serve in the US Senate until 2003.
Yes, his actions were a lawful expression of his power. But I think there is something deeply wrong with using your power, even lawfully, to deny the rights of people who are less powerful than you. Even if you are nice to those same people in personal interactions.
> it's all speculation on this point as to what or why he did it, because the man himself hasn't said anything on the matter--mostly because of the gay hate brigade rallied against him.
When the controversy broke he was literally asked what his views on SSM were, and he didn't give an answer. That strongly implies he doesn't think SSM should be legal.
>By contrast, Tim Cook continued contracts with Foxconn with the sole goal of minimizing production costs by using underpaid overworked labor
Do you have any proof of this or citations on it? Everything I've seen about Apple regarding its supply chain is that it goes above and beyond the minimum needed to be in compliance, and they seem to genuinely care about the well being of their employees in China.
> goes above and beyond the minimum needed to be in compliance
Awesome. I need that line added to my CV. Something like: "Conscientious worker, who often goes above and beyond the minimum needed to be in compliance."
I'd kindly prefer that people not litter HN with puerile, psychologically baiting lines of argumentation from out in left field (c.f. "the gay hate brigade", up above) in the first place.
So you're saying that stifling political discourse by firing people (or forcing them to quit) - as long as you really, really, disagree with them - is acceptable. Got it. For the sake of yourself and your loved ones, I hope you never voice an unpopular opinion.
As others have pointed out, Eich was not fired. His resignation was of his own volition.
It's perfectly legal and acceptable to not use someone's product if you don't agree with their politics. That person does not suffer any loss of rights.
Please don't respond to me with disrespectful and disruptive snark. Nobody was fired. Nobody went to jail. There was no "stifled discourse". If you'd like to elaborate specifically, then please do.
Ok, forced out. Is that more palatable? He was, for all intents and purposes, fired. For expressing a political opinion. In a country that prides itself on being a democracy. If that isn't stifling political discourse, what exactly is it?
Murdering someone or throwing them in a prison because they spoke out against the regime is stifling political discourse. Having to step down as CEO of a company because your unpopular political opinions resulted in a vast number of people boycotting your company's products is just a consequence of the way the free market works.
Here's what often gets missed in this debate: Eich's handling of the outrage, demonstrated incompetence at his job. An exec is a leadership position by definition - the entire Mozilla thing showed us that Eich is not fit to lead.
this comment begs the question... what is leadership? It does not seem like Eich did anything that impinges or diminishes his ability to lead. it seems that Eich acted in a way that was consistent with his personal beliefs (donating money to a cause he believes in) and at the same time in the best interests of Mozilla (resigning so public outcry against him did not damage the company). It seems like he has integrity, which in some circles is considered a invaluable quality of leadership.
When evidence of behavior proving a conflict of interest appears (conflict: personal beliefs demonstrably incompatible with stated position of company), the correct action to take is not to downplay that conflict with transparent and inane language.
> Brendan Eich donated money with the sole goal of denying equal rights to people based on their sexuality.
You know, I'm sick and tired of this lie. A homosexual has exactly the same right to marriage as a heterosexual: a gay man is exactly as free to marry any unmarried consenting woman as a normal man and a lesbian is exactly free to marry any unmarried consenting man as a normal woman.
The essential confusion regards the nature of marriage. It's not about a couple (or group) and their feelings towards one another; it's about the formation of a family and the production of a new generation.
> The essential confusion regards the nature of marriage. It's not about a couple (or group) and their feelings towards one another; it's about the formation of a family and the production of a new generation.
I bet you're hard at work trying to deny infertile couples the ability to marry.
Even if you were right, which you aren't, tradition is not a compelling argument. We've done away with a lot of stupid traditions, like slavery and dowry.
Even if you were right, which you aren't, gay couples can adopt.
I could go on, but why? Your arguments are tired and baseless.
Once we get to the point of calling basic human anatomy 'baseless', we've definitely gone off the deep end as a society. This is not about infertility due to medical conditions or age and it's not about tradition - it's about the fact that a man and a woman having sex is the way that human beings are produced. Everything else is an attempt to ignore reality to suit our our personal desires.
How about birth control? Marriage? These are ignoring the very human impulse to procreate constantly and with many people. Are they wrong too?
That procreation argument is silly. Human beings order themselves into societies, and not as some sort of procreation machine. But instead to encourage kindness, cooperation, happiness. We have laws to keep from harming one another, and roofs over our heads to keep us warmer and dryer than we 'naturally' would have been. This is what it means to be human, too.
Yeah, I would argue that yielding to the impulse to 'procreate constantly' outside of marriage would be equally as harmful as following any other sexual desires (homosexuality, polygamy, pedophilia, etc) that doesn't line up with how sex and marriage are meant to work - that is one man marrying one woman and them having sex.
"Meant to work" is very strange here. First monogamy it supposed to be a natural state. Now its an artificial social construction? Then what's so precious about it? Versus the other states that people are, and have been, living in for centuries?
Oh I get it - argue whatever it takes to make male-female marriage sacred and anything else wrong. Ok. I see.
I can see how 'meant to work' would sound strange, especially since we normally talk about sex as something that should be based solely on our individual physical urges - whatever they may be.
I would say that marriage and sex get their value and purpose from God. That he created man and woman to come together in marriage and have sex. That he made sex pleasurable, and good, and that one of the benefits of sex is often that children are produced.
I think we must either get our understanding of sex and marriage from a source outside ourselves (the transcendent God) or we just make things up to suit our individual drives - and the second option opens us up as individuals, and as a society, to a lot of harm.
I understand this is not a popular viewpoint, especially on HN, but I think it's valuable to offer some pushback in a civil way every now and then.
And how about older couples, past the childbearing age? Should they not be allowed to marry? Should couples be forced to divorce after 50?
This preposterous argument about 'its about producing a new generation' is sophomoric and lazy. It doesn't stand up to a few seconds of reflection. Yet I hear it again and again - its even part of the Mormon official line.
> It's not about a couple (or group) and their feelings towards one another; it's about the formation of a family and the production of a new generation.
If you look at the actual legal structure of marriage outside of who is permitted into it, that's very obviously not the case for the civil institution of marriage -- virtually all of the legal effects are directed toward the creation of a legal relationship of mutual support between the partners. Even the pieces that relate to children (e.g., the presumption of paternity) directly serve the purpose of reinforcing the mutual support relationship between the partners.
One could argue that one of the (many) social functions served by this mutual support arrangements which justifies having a prepackaged, publicy-recognized set of obligations, permissions, and legal privileges for mutual support is the creation of a superior environment within which to raise children, but there are other public functions served, and n any case an environment for raising children doesn't require that children be produced by the people raising them.
Eich shares the same moral ground with gay marriage supporters. Anyone supporting government-issued marriage licenses with associated privileges and entitlements is hateful and bigoted toward individuals who aren't marriage material for various reasons beyond their control.
That statistic is meaningless without a description of the demographics of Georgia, the quality (rather than size) of the schools, and a comparison between the communities in which these schools are each located.
For example: if all black people in Georgia interested in higher education were forced to attend the two worst quality and most underresourced schools, they would probably rank amongst the largest.
I know right? I would've said "yeah maybe I'll do it given the chance", but a few weeks ago, I got the chance to jump from a cliff in a river -- very safe, and everyone was doing it, but I still froze for a second. Then someone behind me went "just look ahead, don't look down!=" which is what I did! :)
